Party bosses selling out Free State

At times angry and choked with emotion, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday took on Republican critics of her department’s handling of the September terrorist attack in Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, but r...

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Make no mistake about it from State Board of Elections (SBE) Administrator-for-life Linda Lamone to the legislators who refuse to ask the lieutenant governor what he knew and when he knew it regarding the state healthcare rollout fiasco, Anthony Brown is the Democrat machines’s selection as the next governor of Maryland.

Given Maryland is a yellow state as in yellow dog Democrat, Brown is probably a shoe-in. Lamonegate and healthcaregate will mean nothing to voters. Most probably won’t even know they exist or Brown’s role. But the informed electorate will know the veteran and Prince George’s County resident is incompetent for state office.

First the is the matter of Lamone’s ruling without the advise of the other five members of the SBE or outside lawyers, allows running mates of gubernatorial candidates who are statewide officeholders to raise money during the legislative session. It benefits Brown because Brown is running with Howard County Executive Ken Ulman, who can raise funds.

Attorney General Doug Gansler’s running mate is Del. Jolene Ivey. Like Gansler and Brown, she is barred from raising campaign money during its session.

By the way, the machine appointed Lamone-for-life in 2005 when Gov. Robert Ehrlich attempted to get rid of her. The state Senate wrote a law, that withstood a veto, that keeps Lamone in place until the Senate confirms a successor. It is unclear what Senate President Mike Miller would do if she dies before him.

As for healthcare, Brown showed up at a hearing Jan. 19 only to have softballs lobbed at him from lawmakers who have already endorsed him. Brown left Health Secretary Josh Sharfstein behind to take the heat. That is not leadership.

Brown’s mishandling of this is like Hillary Cinton’s mishandling of congressional testimony on Benghazi. She attempted to avoid the problem for a year, then she dramatically claimed “…We had four dead Americans. What difference does it make what happened. It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to keep it from happening again.”

Like Clinton, Brown does not want anyone to scrutinize why he was not in charge of what was going on, like Marylanders were promised he was. Like Hillary, the lieutenant governor says the important thing is to fix it. Learning from history so we don’t repeat it is also important. If Brown does not know this, he is not the man for the job.

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